User blog:Pinkguy the b0ss/Super Mario Bros. Review
What's up my Shreks, It's me DiamondMinerStudios. This will be my first video game review. Today I'm going to be reviewing a video game classic - Super Mario Bros. for the NES. So, for those who have never heard about this game (which is unlikely considering its status), you play as the moustached Italian plumbers themselves - Mario, and his brother Luigi - on a quest to save Princess Peach from the evil Bowser and his minions (geez, I hate that word... more on that in a future post). Mario (and Luigi, if you're in a two-player game) must travel through eight different worlds and fight seven fake Bowsers in order to face the real Bowser and save the princess. So, with that out of the way, let's talk about the gameplay and design. Gameplay The controls are quite simple to use - you use left and right on the D-pad to move, down on the D-pad to duck, the B button to attack (if you have a fire flower), and the A button to jump. If you hold down B and move, you run, and with the layout of the controller's buttons, you can easily hold B and use the rest of your thumb to press A to run and jump, which makes it possible to go through the levels pretty fast. The physics are somewhat stiff when compared to later entries, but it's nothing that ruins the experience. That might be because I've played this game tons of times, so I'm used to it by now, but there might be a learning curve for newer players. In order to kill enemies, you have to jump on top of them, shoot them with fireballs, or touch them when invincible. One useful way to kill them is in level 5-1, where you can jump onto a koopa and hit its shell on the left, making it move across the screen to the right, killing enemies on contact. The reason I pointed out 5-1 - there are enough enemies in a sequence that the gliding shell will earn you en extra life, because the more enemies a shell hits, the more points you get, which will eventually add up to a 1UP if enough enemies are hit in a row, which is about 8 or so. There are powerups hidden within blocks all around the game. When you hit one as small Mario, a mushroom comes out, and if you collect it, you grow. Hit another as normal-sized Mario, you get a flower which allows you to shoot enemies with fireballs. This is arguably the most useful powerup in the game, besides 1UP mushrooms, which give an extra life. Last but not least, we have the Star, a rare powerup which makes you invincible for a few seconds, killing enemies on contact. Alongside powerups, some blocks will give you coins, and you may notice there are coins absolutely everywhere. Why are they useful, you might ask? Well, collect 100 of them, and you get a 1UP. Yes, there are a lot of ways to get extra lives in this game. Design Now let's talk about the design. The design is a little bit primitive compared to platformers of the 1990s and today, but that does not mean it is bad. In fact, it's outstanding what they accomplished in 1985. Most games then were only one screen and were focused on getting a high score, but this was one of the first games where the screen scrolled and the goal was to finish a set amount of stages instead. Now what I want to really talk about here - the difficulty. The game is very easy to pick up, as in the first few levels are a cakewalk, and it gets more and more challenging until the last level, which is the most difficult of all of them. The game may get challenging, but it is never too difficult all of a sudden and isn't too easy either, in fact, I think the difficulty in this game is one of the best-designed I have ever seen on the NES. SMB3 and SMW are better in this regard, but this game is still on par with those games (especially when compared to some other NES games.... *shudder*). Speaking of that, normally a game over would send you back to world 1-1, if it wasn't for a secret code - hold A and press start on the title screen, and it will start on the first level of the world you got the game over on, with a new set of three lives. Complaints I only have four. First, the game overs send you back to level 1, but as I said before, there is a secret continue code. Second, if the screen scrolls, you can't make it scroll backwards. It's not an issue that ruins the game, it's just a minor annoyance. Third, if you get hit by anything as fire Mario, you shrink to small Mario, and not just regular Mario. This can get a bit annoying at first, but after a while, you'll get used to it. Last, and the least of my issues, is the graphics. They look fine enough for an early-release NES title, but by today's standards... are really basic and have some ugly colors. To put it bluntly, the graphics in SMB have aged pretty poorly. But, I digress, because almost all early NES games have bad graphics due to the technical limitations of the system and relatively little knowledge developers possessed of the hardware's true capabilities at the time. Verdict I like this game quite a bit. Sure, it's old, but it's a genuinely good game that's still fun to play today. It's honestly my fourth-favorite 2D Mario game, fourth only to Super Mario Land 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World. Also, if you are going to play this in any way, I prefer to play it on the original NES, because of the controller. I'm not an old-school purist or anything like that, it's just that I prefer the original NES on a CRT TV since it doesn't have input lag like a flatscreen, and because the NES version is my favorite. However, if you don't have enough money for an original NES (they can get quite expensive), you can always buy it on the Wii virtual console if you have a Wii, or just use an emulator. I still reccomend using a controller, so you can buy a USB controller to play it that way. You could also play on Super Mario All-Stars, which has better graphics and music. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color also exists, but I wouldn't recommend that version as much as the excellent NES and SNES versions because of the screen crunch. Whatever way you play it, I reccomend this game 100%. Category:Blog posts